Oh dear – Senator Pamela Wallin may have to end up paying back between $120K and $140K in questionable expenses, but she’s not happy about it, and calls the process unfair. And she’s right to a point – that the auditors applied the post-2012 rules to the pre-2012 period, but Wallin seems to forget that the Internal Economy Committee can also decide what seems to be “reasonable” in terms of the expenses claimed, or what should have been her better judgement. There were also concerns that Wallin and her staff retroactively changed her calendar in order to remove riding association events, though Wallin claims that she was just removing personal details, and that the auditors already had calendar copies as well as access to her hand-written diary, and that Senator Tkachuk told her to, because the process was already bogged down and taking too long. Nevertheless, she plans to pay back the expenses with interest while she challenges the rules. Here’s a look at how Wallin’s audit results may affect other Senators who travel to do studies or promote causes that aren’t immediately the subject of committee duties. This of course brings me to the point of the pundit class and various talking heads – including Marjory LeBreton – going on about how this is some signal that the Senate has to “change or die.” Um, change how? This isn’t an issue about the Senate as it operates, it’s about financial management issues, which is largely with in the financial controls of the Senate’s administration. Do those rules need to be tightened? Sure – and they realised that and have been doing that over the past couple of years. Could they be more transparent? Absolutely – and they’re already far more transparent than MPs are, for that matter. But none of this has to do with the structure of the Senate itself, so somehow trying to make the inappropriate expenses of a small handful of Senators into an indictment of the Chamber as a whole is, quite frankly, intellectually dishonest. More to the point, whenever someone says “reform,” the immediate response is “reform how? To what end?” Chances are, they won’t have an intelligible answer for you, which is telling about the problem with the level of debate, where “reform” is treated like some kind of magical incantation, as though it will somehow make everything better without any kind of plan.
Tag Archives: Pamela Wallin
Roundup: Pamela Wallin’s big day
It’s the big day for Senator Pamela Wallin, as her audit gets released today. CBC’s sources say that the repayment could run over the $100,000 mark, of which she has already repaid $38,000. We’ll see what kinds of reverberations this has, and whether the full Senate will need to be recalled to deal with this.
Stephen Harper added his own voice to the condemnation of Russia’s anti-gay laws, in support of John Baird’s position. While there are concerns this may split the Conservative base, there does seem to be a grudging acceptance that we should speak up if gays and lesbians are being persecuted and murdered in countries like Russia or Uganda.
Roundup: Mulcair’s summer tour
While in St. John’s, NL, Thomas Mulcair claimed that he won’t raise personal taxes (because apparently people don’t pay for corporate taxes) and that nobody had ever asked him that before (not true). He also pointed to a graveyard on a map and said that the Liberals are headed there – because that’s classy and raises the tone of debate! He then moved onto PEI to kick off his summer tour of constitutional vandalism (aka advocating Senate abolition) and offered nothing but bluster and misleading characterisations.
The Senate’s internal economy committee promises that they won’t “monkey around” with Pamela Wallin’s audit, but it may be damaging enough that they might consider recalling the full Senate shortly to deal with it.
Roundup: Ken Dryden’s leadership debt to himself
In what is likely going to be an optics nightmare for the Liberals, former leadership candidate Ken Dryden said that he has no plans to repay his 2006 leadership debt, because it’s all loans he gave to himself. When the Conservatives and NDP changed the law mid-campaign to restrict donations (for the sole purpose of screwing over the Liberals), Dryden’s ability to secure the necessary donations could no longer happen. Given that Elections Canada can’t enforce the laws around those repayments (thanks again to the dog’s breakfast that the Conservatives and NDP made of the law in their rush to screw over the Liberals), he apparently no longer sees the point in getting strangers to repay his loans to himself. There are plans to make political loans to oneself illegal, but that legislation is stalled, and there are some serious concerns that it would give financial institutions too much power to determine who can and can’t run if they are to be given sole authority to grant loans. So while Dryden’s abandoning his quest to pay back his loans (to himself) looks bad, it would seem that the Conservatives and the NDP have only themselves to blame, and anyone complaining that this whole thing is anti-democratic should also ask themselves how “democratic” it was for two parties to collude to screw over another one. No one walks away from this one looking pure.
Roundup: Heir to the Canadian throne
So there we have it – a future King of Canada has been born, and everyone’s delighted. No, seriously – everyone, though the NDP’s official statement of “warmest congratulations” was pretty lukewarm. And it was even more disappointing that the official Canadian Crown Twitter account was using the #BritishMonarchy hashtag rather than, you know, the Canadian Monarchy, which this baby is also heir to. Also, it seems that royal babies are good for business. Who knew?
Quebec’s attorney general has decided to weigh in on the challenge of the royal succession bill at the Quebec Superior Court, and he too believes that the provinces have a role in making such a change, as the constitution would otherwise indicate. The federal government says it will fight the challenge, since they would rather let political expedience trump the constitution.
Roundup: PR disasters and denials
The president of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway visited Lac-Mégantic yesterday, but managed to strike all of the wrong tones in his delivery, giving a performance that mystified public relations experts. Meanwhile, Thomas Mulcair insists that he didn’t link the Lac-Mégantic explosion with budget cuts – and yet there’s video with him saying it. Huh. Andrew Coyne warns against those – including Mulcair – seeking to use the disaster to further their own agendas.
Liberal MP Scott Brison says that the weak labour market and high youth unemployment is “scarring” both those youths and their parents.
Roundup: Politics and blame for Lac-Mégantic
As the blame and politics around the Lac-Mégantic explosion swirl about, which you can parse in all sorts of different ways – including the company saying that the locomotive may have been tampered with – it does bear reminding that Transport Canada has been slapped by auditors in the past for not having clear training regimes and procedures for their inspectors – so that even if inspections were conducted, were they all conducted the same, and what kind of follow-up was done, given the rates at which the same problems were found in successive inspections. The CBC’s extensive coverage can be found here. Liza Ch. Savage looks at how it figures into the Keystone XL pipeline debate in the States. Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall also send their condolences, as well as those for the floods in Alberta.
Roundup: Another day of the Senate doing its job
The Senate did its job, and sent the union transparency bill back to the Commons. Sixteen senators voted in favour of Conservative Senator Hugh Segal’s amendment, which raised the disclosure level in the bill (to the same level as the government changed Brent Rathgeber’s bill to, as it happens). Oh, and another six Conservative Senators abstained, which pushed the vote over. This has shown the rifts opening up in the Conservative caucus – MPs griping about Senators doing their jobs (because MPs of course never draft and then pass bad bills), and Senators in the caucus who are tired of being bullied into supporting bad bills. And in this case – a bill that was entirely dubious constitutionally – well, it was intolerable for most of them to support it, and yes, numerous Harper appointees voted for the amendment, including one of the “elected” Senators from Alberta. And while some Conservatives are grousing that this is just the Senate trying to justify their existence, it’s really just them doing their jobs. This shouldn’t be dramatic because the Senate is not a rubber stamp, and it never has been. Just because people expect them to be – out of civic ignorance – and are suddenly shocked that the system works the way it’s supposed to, it should be a reminder and a teachable moment. Instead we’re seeing complete butchery of civic literacy among the political talking heads, which is distressing to say the least.
Roundup: Divisions among Conservative senators
The union transparency bill has put real divisions in the Conservative senate caucus, and several of them are planning on voting against it, even more abstaining. These aren’t just the Red Tories either – one of Harper’s own appointees even spoke out against it yesterday, which is indicative that it’s a bigger problem for caucus unity, which is why Senator Marjory LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, has been cracking the whip so harshly. Of course, the independence of its members is the whole reason why the Senate exists as it does – to provide a better check on the elected MPs when they’re up to no good for populist reasons, and this very problematic bill fits those parameters. John Ivison recounts a somewhat heated meeting between one of the MPs in favour of the bill and Senator Segal, one of the opponents.
QP: What about Saulie Zajdel?
The final Monday of the spring sitting, and while there were a lot of empty spaces along the government front bench, the opposition benches were restless. Thomas Mulcair started off by bringing up last week’s Pamela Wallin interview, where she said that she briefed the Prime Minister’s office about her audit, contrary to Harper saying that he wasn’t briefed — never mind the fact that Wright and Harper are not the same person. James Moore, the designated back-up PM du jour, reminded him that there was an independent process underway. Mulcair then brought up the arrest of former Conservative candidate and “regional advisor” Saulie Zajdel, and he wondered what he was doing for Moore when he worked there. Moore said that the charges were of a municipal nature, and if he or the mayor were found guilty, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. When Megan Leslie brought up the very same topic, wondering why Zadjel left Moore’s employ, Moore hit back saying back by the justice system works best when people who know of wrongdoing come forward, as Mulcair should have done when he was offered a bribe seventeen years ago. For her final question, Leslie brought up Senator Wallin’s audit, to which Moore decided to go after Trudeau’s speaking engagements. Trudeau was up next, and brought up the cheque from Nigel Wright. Moore insisted that they didn’t have access to any personal cheques, but Trudeau got a cheque from the Canadian Mental Health Commission for a speaking engagement. Trudeau retorted that his party is raising the bar on transparency, before asking if any member of the government had met with Wright post-resignation. Moore kept swiping about Trudeau’s speaking engagements. When Trudeau pressed, Moore responded that no, he hadn’t met with Wright.